


Ain't No Stopping

by glow_in_the_dark



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Insomnia, John is a Saint, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glow_in_the_dark/pseuds/glow_in_the_dark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After several weeks of no cases, Sherlock finally starts to snap and John works his Watson magic to get him to sleep. </p><p>(Very SFW)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't No Stopping

**Author's Note:**

> This was just floatinf around in my head, I hope you enjoy it. It's just light and SFW, so nothing too exciting. Oh, and very much un-beta'd, so all mistakes are thoroughly mine X3

John felt _useless._

A turn of his head brought Sherlock into view again. They hadn’t had a case of interest in three weeks and Sherlock was suffering for it, his mind destroying itself from the inside out.

And there was nothing John could _do._

He was lucky to be able to sit in the same room as Sherlock currently. It spoke volumes that whilst Sherlock would snap and verbally _destroy_ anybody who dared step foot into 221B, the youngest Holmes let John stay in his company. As long as John was silent and didn’t move, Sherlock would tolerate his existence.

\-------------------------------

The skull lay in shattered pieces by the front door.

John had been sitting in his chair, drinking a mug of tea (Sherlock’s cup sitting patiently on the coffee table should he choose to accept it) when Mycroft walked through the door.

Before John could get a word in edgewise and tell Mycroft that now was _really not the time_ Sherlock had stood from his position curled up on the couch, crossed to the mantle in two steps and hurtled his skull at Mycroft. The elder Holmes barely dodged the projectile as Sherlock began screaming insults at his brother, yelling out all the state’s secrets he could deduce from the cuffs of Mycroft’s suit jacket and the fine wrinkles in his tie.

John got forcefully between the two and demanded that Mycroft leave immediately as he bodily restrained Sherlock before the man could rip his brother’s eyes out.

Sherlock’s deductions turned towards John, scathing remarks about his personal and romantic life reverberating off the walls of their flat. With a gentle force John navigated Sherlock to sit back down on the couch. The deductions didn’t stop, Sherlock remarking about what he had for lunch three days ago to why his relationship with Sarah was failing miserably. 

John didn’t ignore Sherlock, but he didn’t let the scathing words affect him. Better Sherlock take it out on him than have his mind tear itself apart.

He smiled lightly when Sherlock picked up his mug and drank a couple mouthfuls of tea to wet his throat before continuing his litany of deductions. When Sherlock ran out of things to deduce about the doctor, John placed Sherlock’s laptop in front of him on the table and opened up his email account. “Go on, tell me all about how dull and boring everybody is and how obvious their problems are.”

Sherlock did just that.

He would read through his emails from potential clients, sometimes out loud so John could hear just how hideously _simple_ these people’s problems were. Every deduction that could be made was yelled loud enough for John to hear no matter where in the flat he decided to be. And every scathing reply to those potential clients was also said aloud before being sent off. John didn’t have the heart to tell him to make his replies a little more humane. Sherlock needed to vent, and this was one of the ways he would do so. He’d just have to go through Sherlock’s sent box afterwards and send a follow up e-mail apologising and explaining about why Sherlock had been so harsh. People usually accepted John’s apologies on Sherlock’s behalf.

In past situations like this one, John would leave the flat and go for a very long, very thorough walk. There was only so much of Sherlock anybody could take when he got into these black moods, and John was sure that the man appreciated some breathing space now and then. But there was something different about this one. Something was off about the way Sherlock was behaving, and John couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But he knew that leaving the flat right now was the worst possible thing he could do for Sherlock.

John walked to their front door and looked down at the shattered remains of the skull. He frowned slightly. Sherlock loved his skull. Well, _loved_ in the sense that Sherlock enjoyed having the skull around to act as his sounding board for when John was inconveniently not present or so unperceptive that talking to an inanimate object proved to be more beneficial that discussing things with an actual human being. 

Taking one of the newspapers from the kitchen table, John began picking up the bits and pieces of the skull and placed them on the paper. Once he was sure he had gotten everything he delicately picked the newspaper up and placed it on the living room table. He would have put it on the kitchen table, but there was honestly not one spare inch of space after the previous weeks of Sherlock trying to distract himself with experiments. John retreated to his room momentarily and rummaged through the medical supplies he kept in his wardrobe to retrieve his medical grade super glue.

Sherlock had let his laptop fall to the floor and John hoped it survived the fall. Sherlock himself was silently staring at the broken skull on the table.

John pulled his chair around until it was situated directly in front of the table and placed his super glue to the left of the newspaper. Sherlock's eyes briefly flickered over to the glue then back at the shattered skull.

John began the slow process of picking pieces of human skull up and piecing them together before applying glue and letting the forming skull set. It took a full seventeen minutes before Sherlock joined in, working on the smaller pieces as John worked on the bigger ones.

\-------------------------------------------------

It was pitch black outside when the skull was finally whole again. Sherlock had picked it up and placed it gingerly back on the mantle, cataloguing the new cracks in his second most efficient sounding board.

John gently took his wrist and led him to Sherlock’s bedroom. 

Sherlock hadn’t slept in 90 hours, nearly four days, and he didn’t realise how tired he was until John nudged him under the covers.

Sherlock watched as John puttered around his room, picking up the tornado path of clothing on his floor and putting the appropriate ones in his hamper, hanging the clean items away in his draws and wardrobe. John left momentarily and came back with a glass of water. 

“Sit up, please.”

Sherlock glared at John for demanding something from him but sat all the same, taking the offered water and downing the entire glass. John smiled at him and left once more, returning again with the same glass refilled. The glass was placed on his bedside table, John lifting the covers so Sherlock could lie back down.

Sherlock yanked the covers out of John’s grip, bunching them tight around his head as he roll on his side to face the shorter male, glowering all the while. “This isn’t going to work. People don’t just fall asleep because you tell them to. _I_ won’t just fall asleep because you’ve told me to.”

“I’m not expecting you to fall asleep straight away, Sherlock.” John sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face as he sat down on the bed in the small pocket of space Sherlock’s body had created in its foetal pose. “But you need to start relaxing and unwinding. You’ve been awake for four days, Sherlock. Your body needs to sleep. Doctor’s orders.”

“Again,” Sherlock spat the word out, scowl pinching his brow. “Just because you say I should sleep, _doesn’t mean it’s going to happen._ ”

The fingers of John’s right hand were in Sherlock’s hair before he could even process the thought. In long, slow strokes from forehead to the base of Sherlock’s skull, John, well, petted Sherlock. He had considered a cranial massage but figured that the specific points of constant contact would aggravate the man instead of relaxing him. So John just ran the palm of his hand over the skin and curls of hair that had the privilege to sit on top of what was, in John’s personal opinion, the most amazing brain that ever existed. 

Sherlock tensed up at first at the sudden physical contact and was about to tell John _exactly_ where he could stick that hand of his, but couldn’t get the words to form. His body slowly relaxed into his bed, fingers un-tensing from the iron grip they had on his duvet. He closed his eyes, the upper lids lifting ever so slightly every time John started another stroke from his brows. The simple action was so pleasant and calming that Sherlock was relaxed into silence. His thoughts took on more productive tones and became a lot gentler from the razor sharpness that had been ripping his psyche apart for the past weeks.

As John predicted, it didn’t take long at all for Sherlock to relax to the point where he just drifted into sleep. He kept stroking for a few extra minutes, making sure Sherlock had entered REM before carefully standing from the bed. He turned the light off and shut the door quietly behind him, finally feeling a little bit useful in getting the world’s only consulting detective to fall asleep.


End file.
